Talitha Cumi
by cafe4deux
Summary: Psychical revelations in the aftermath of 3rd Impact indulge a new dynamic between Asuka and Rei. Re-posted for your enjoyment.


**Talitha Cumi  
**  
Asuka awoke from a long, lurid life.  
  
Her mother's suicide.  
  
Her deep misgivings.  
  
Her Eva.  
  
The Angels.  
  
Shinji.  
  
She had been dreaming.  
  
Oh... Shinji. If only she'd had the chance, if she'd only...  
  
She longed to touch him with her eyes, and so, his face became the first inkling she encountered, the first nuance of resurrection.  
  
But his face was a mere brush of some impalpable reality, not even a memory, washing with the lingering gust of a wind-swept sea upon her face. Her mind, as if trapped in a primordial haze, was powerless to embrace it. Her heart, stirring from spiritual hibernation, reclaimed the pang of despair it once called master. That pang, indeed, stirred her out of pure familiarity.  
  
She found her body reticent, at first. The journey here had exhausted her and her eyes stung in response to the dull light of a great, vapid morning. Her tendons languished to move. Her tongue related the pungent sea air. Her feet felt wet, even slimy. Her breath seethed out of her chest and drew back, raggedly.  
  
The sting and glare dwindled, flooding her vision with a mutant earth.  
  
A cold, gray beach.  
  
A slithering line of red waves.  
  
A sky the color of a dead television screen.  
  
An ocean of crucified Evas, bearing mute testimony.  
  
Gott in Himmel. It was all over.  
  
The tears of ire would not come and her eyes shivered to cry. She bent her head solemnly and realized her nudity, the wet sand draping her - she was reminded of bouts with unwanted immaturity and dependence. She was still just a girl. Perhaps, she had been lying here exposed for days, weeks, unconscious - the wiles of anything, seen or invisible, unabatedly privy to her frailty. She pulled herself into a ball and tried to hide within the semi-shaded depths of her lap.  
  
The waves slid audibly. Her sobs billowed forth.  
  
The End of the World, Asuka. You failed. The entire future of humankind is failed and butchered. The world is dead and you haven't the slightest care for anyone else, she thought. Can you fathom what you've let transpire? What you conceded to? Everyone you loved, everyone you wanted to be loved by is dead and you pine for a covering?  
  
"Red... like a mother's blood."  
  
The voice was soft, comely but bereft of feeling. It seemed to emanate from beyond her and within her, a whisper beneath the murmuring waves.  
  
The voice fell upon Asuka, thwarted her sobs and threw her mind to shudder in the dregs of her dream, a dizzying sensation like travelling in a steep, quick drop. The tenable loneliness of that beach flew away, divesting her of personal will, creating a cosmic contradiction against her. She was left with humiliation. She knew that she was never alone and that the dream had left a single manifestation behind.  
  
Was this to be penance?  
  
Rei did not return the glare that Asuka shot, in fact, she seemed uncannily similar to her nominal self. She was kneeling piously in the sand, her hands folded and her scarlet eyes fixed in an undiscovered gulf, neither searching nor idling. Her lips were ajar by a sliver and the wind slipped through her hair, now appearing a pale silver against the tableau of the beach. She, too, was unclad but completely apathetic to her own person.  
  
Asuka could have characterized her as disappointed, if she pleased, or exasperated like the martyr who's death became impermanent. She could have had awe glinting in her eyes as she scanned Rei, impressed by her acquiescence: she was joined to the silent, bitter choir of a dead earth. She could, still, have been ameliorated by the girl's familiar form and face, a shred of believability in the confounding dawn.  
  
She recalled an elevator ride and buried her face. "I feel sick," she muttered.  
  
She clinched her eyelids. She realized a need to pray for the millionth time in her life but she wrested it away, God would only complicate things, she decided. He certainly couldn't bear her now, couldn't remedy her wretchedness... was he even there to reject her, in this aftermath?  
  
How could anything endure it?  
  
Oh Shinji... Shinji. How did that disgusting Wunder Girl survive? Why couldn't you have survived? Why didn't you survive, you imbecile? What kept you? Why did you leave me, idiot?  
  
A montage melted through her, the face of what might have been:  
  
The dismembered portions of Eva, splotched with amber blood.  
  
The mind-shock of her flesh being torn asunder.  
  
The wings of the Mass Production Units, their eyes mystical and menacing.  
  
The water surging about her, explosions of drifting depth charges.  
  
The brave Shinji dissolving into fluid.  
  
I wish I were dead, she mused. I wish they'd killed me too, Shinji... you idiot. It's not fair. I want to die, too. I want death...  
  
...instead of the cold ever-after.  
  
A shiver began to snake through her body, her nerves relearning their individual triggers released the feeling of deep chill. Her muscles tensed against this new sensory information, she pulled in tighter still, trying to escape into her own body heat but it was low, out of reach. Her body succumbed to convulsive, epileptic-like jerks telegraphing fears of hypothermic shock into her brain - she found it likely only because the events of that montage felt so long passed.  
  
Had she died? Had she lived? Had she been rejected from existence, her spirit destroyed? Had she died as Rei had?  
  
She lost control. Her mind churned and bled into a pool of despondent confusion, her tears crashed forth and a wailing rattled in her throat. She was raped by her own helplessness.  
  
This is all your fault... all of it... Shinji... you failure, you murderer!  
  
A warm hand lit upon the back of her neck, it swiftly penetrated her dark terror and moved across to her cheek, caressing it, leeching her heart of its distress.  
  
Her heart soared. This was the hand she desired. This hand was gorgeous, musical, erotic. This hand had beguiled her eyes as she loved him from afar and furtively, in a deniable nook of her heart. It drove the Angels away. It founded a new heaven and a new earth. He had triumphed over all and won the prize to be by her side, to need her, to love her - and to be eternally requited. Destiny. Shinji had returned to claim his destiny, she knew it.  
  
Revelation segued into furious joy mingled with sorrow. What remained unsaid crashed out of her mouth in clumps; self-recriminations, confessions of amorous languishing, want for intimacy and confidence, entreaties for forgiveness... a profession of unconditional love.  
  
"I love you... I want you..." she said the words.  
  
The desire became gloriously painful. She smiled. She took the hand of her mate, kissed it violently, and allowed her eyes to fall open.  
  
Rei glowed upon Asuka, her eyes no longer unearthly but possessed by crimson galaxies of passion. Was she... happy?  
  
A scream smacked the atmosphere...  
  
...and then she set upon her.  
  
Asuka wrung Rei's throat as though she were a toy. Her yells undulated between volcanic terror and blood-curdling hatred. Rei's face remained flushed and placid, the pain only wrinkling the corner of her mouth. She tenderly stroked upon Asuka's cheek. The waves meekly caressed their calves and feet. The breeze whistled patiently. The gray skies waited.  
  
Asuka gave all her might, all her wishes, all her dreaming into killing the girl but the focussed frenzy was sifted through by hysterics. She shattered and collapsed onto Rei's body, clawing at her, shrieking and sobbing terribly.  
  
She hurt for her destitute heart or so she believed, though she felt it capitulating to a dark gnawing, a notion of meaninglessness.  
  
Can you be so selfish? So blinded? How would you have ever found love? Nothing matters after the end, Asuka. Certainly not you or the grievances you perceive. Are those all you've ever had? Why aren't you dead, then? Why are you? How could you survive? How... when he did not?  
  
Something forestalled her agreement, something close.  
  
Rei held her with a zealous grip such as to persuade Asuka that she would evaporate otherwise. She realized the honesty of Rei's skin transmitted - her delicate arms effecting such a desperate hold, her gentle heartbeats lilting of an implicit love, her fever-warm thighs embracing her own. The doll had become emotional, exceptionally emotional.  
  
More became vivid to her. Asuka felt warmth, an inward warmth that flowed between the insuperable clutch of her spiritual solitude and its fueling pride, severing their symbiosis. It rose and descended like a sensuous, osmotic light but it progressed like water, blindly seeking balance, naturally drawn to the slits and cracks in her self-perception. She clamored to detect it's source, but couldn't. She imagined her psyche being infested by this ambient urge, its presence perhaps intrinsic and its efforts melting everything it touched - most incredibly, her desire to resist and how she desired to. She began to actualize it and, suddenly, it reintroduced her dream to her - her life, but it was different.  
  
Your mother's ultimate, unknowing sacrifice...  
  
Her legacy, a surrogate to human destiny....  
  
From within the scientific fabrication of humankind...  
  
From without the immortal evangelism of destiny...  
  
He was doomed that what must come to pass, would come to pass...  
  
...that even you might find.  
  
This truth was everywhere, instantly and simultaneously. The very particles of the air vibrated with it, the sea reflected it and she could conceive of what was surging through and out of Rei's nude body.  
  
How could this be the truth? How could she have missed such a supreme answer? How could it remain hidden through all the tribulation? How could it have been so ruthlessly revealed? How could she respond to it? How could anyone?  
  
...with affirmation to a singular, veritable need... for her.  
  
Asuka continued to quake as she lifted her eyes open again, this time with courage. She swallowed back the pain, attempted to interact upon this new possibility and graciously accept the salvation she was being offered. Rei was unwavering, convicted and willing. She peered into Asuka's eyes for the same.  
  
Wunder Girl... my Wunder Girl.  
  
Asuka wanted to laugh, it was a cosmic irony.  
  
"Don't you ever smile?" Asuka's question rang pretentious but was betrayed by the frustration she felt to see Rei's usual, quiescent lips.  
  
"I do not understand," Rei couldn't wholly smother her original pleasure, she pushed one of Asuka's fiery curls behind an ear, "is it not enough to acknowledge my love of you?"  
  
"When you're pleased," Asuka allowed a small, smug grin, "you smile. That's what normal people do, dumkopf."  
  
"I have never smiled," Rei seemed distant suddenly, "Not even for the..."  
  
"...then smile."  
  
"I do not know if I can."  
  
"Don't be stupid," Asuka played a finger along Rei's lips.  
  
She tried for her.  
  
"I do not believe..."  
  
Asuka recalled a melody, another vestige of that former dream - perhaps it once came wafting out of Misato's kitchen. But as ephemeral as those memories had turned they were potent enough to remind her that existence is sustained by its persuasion to be temporal.  
  
She was saved, for now, danka Gott.  
  
"Forget it," her lips trembled as they found Rei's, "...we'll figure it out, anyways."  
  
In the east, tendrils of sunlight began to crack the clouds. 


End file.
